Handbook Service design principles: 100 ideas to improve the user and customer experience in simple and practical ways.

From the handbook

With this handbook, I don’t want to preach the high value of Service Design. I don’t want to explain all the theoretical details about it. This book doesn’t respect academic principles. This book doesn’t give an overview of what Service Design is. This book doesn’t detail design methods. Some other people do that much better than me. If you are looking for this type of content, stop reading this book after this chapter.

Before you stop reading, here are two suggestions, if you want this type of content. Open your browser and google “This Is Service Design Thinking.” It’s a great book by Jakob Schneider and Marc Stickdorn. In that, they explain what Service Design is in detail. Or google “Service Design: From Insight to Implementation.” It’s a book by Andy Polaine, Ben Reason, and Lavrans Løvlie. Andy is the person who brought me into the world of Service Design and made me love it. So, this book is a good start, if you want to have a good understanding of the Service Design practice in general.

If you are still here and didn’t open Google, keep on reading to discover what this book is about. Oh! And thanks for not leaving, I really like your adventurous mindset.

Introduction

A handbook for business owners who don’t give a fuck about Service Design and need practical rules of thumb.

Services Are Everywhere.

I live in Switzerland. Here, around 70% of the active population works in the service industries. Services are everywhere and are the heart of our economy. Is it like that only in my little country? In its “World Development Indicators,” the World Bank Group explains that the service sector continues to dominate in high-income countries. The service sector accounted for nearly 75% of the GDP of these countries in 2014.

But Service Design is still obscure.

The way we set up human interaction between humans and services is obscure. The way we can design the experience between you and your bank, church, and hospital is pretty obscure. This little handbook gives 100 tiny and simple principles, ideas, or advice to help design better services.

What this book is about

The hypothesis of this handbook is that you don’t need to understand the full extent of Service Design to improve the user and customer experience. You don’t need to understand all the theory to create great services. This hypothesis is inspired by a study by Alejandro Drexler, Greg Fischer, and Antoinette Schoar. They wanted to figure out the best way to help micro-entrepreneurs learn the basics of accounting. They had three groups of entrepreneurs. The first group received classical teaching, like in a university. They received complex knowledge, which they had to master. The second group studied accounting with simple rules like “Keep personal and business money in different drawers.” The third group didn’t receive any instruction. Interestingly, the first group, which received complete instructions, and the third group, which didn’t receive any, performed at the same level. But the group that received simple rules of thumb increased their sales by 25%. This group had also managed their accounting and cash in a much better way.

Structure of the book

That’s why each principle in this handbook is summarized in a simple rule of thumb. These simple rules of thumb should be enough for smart readers. You might find, under each principle, a little story, an example, or a study. This additional content can help you turn this principle into action.